Summary: Oedipus is talking to his uncle, Creon, asking him to bury his mother and allow him to live on the mountain Cithaeron that is forever linked to his name. He chooses to live on this mountain because it is the very same mountain that his parents left him to die when he was an infant. He continues by asking Creon to watch over his two daughters/sisers Antigone and Ismene, and that his boys are nearly men and they do not need Creon to watch them. Both of Oedipus’ daughters/sisters enter and weep for him, as he tells them who he really is. He also begins asking many rhetorical questions about what is to happen to his girls. He tells them that Creon is now their father and gives them only one piece of advice. To pray.
Analysis:
It’s ironic how Oedipus wants to live the rest of his life in the very same place his parents left him to die. Also, when he is asking rhetorical questions to his sister/daughters he asks "He sowed the field from which he himself sprung, and begot you, his children, at the source of his own being...and who will marry you?" and then answers "there is no one who will do so, children; your destiny is clear -- to waste away unmarried, childless." He states this because he now realizes that whatever the Gods have said, it will happen. It is as if the future is written in stone and nothing will change it.
Analysis:
It’s ironic how Oedipus wants to live the rest of his life in the very same place his parents left him to die. Also, when he is asking rhetorical questions to his sister/daughters he asks "He sowed the field from which he himself sprung, and begot you, his children, at the source of his own being...and who will marry you?" and then answers "there is no one who will do so, children; your destiny is clear -- to waste away unmarried, childless." He states this because he now realizes that whatever the Gods have said, it will happen. It is as if the future is written in stone and nothing will change it.